Sympathy for the Devil
The band releases, Sympathy for the Devil, from, Beggars Banquet. Jagger:
Songs can metamorphosize. And Sympathy for the Devil is one of those songs that started off like one thing, I wrote it one way and then we started the change the rhythm. And then it became completely different. And then it got very exciting. It started off as a folk song and then became a samba. A good song can become anything. It’s got lots of historical references and lots of poetry.
Dancing With Mr D
0 0 Rhonda Rhonda2014-11-29 14:36:422014-12-28 18:22:48Dancing With Mr D
Angie
The band releases, Angie, from the album, Goat’s Head Soup. Jagger:
People began to say that song was written about David Bowie’s wife but the truth is that Keith wrote the title. He said, ‘Angie,’ and I think it was to do with his daughter. She’s called Angela. And then I just wrote the rest of it.
Silver Train
0 0 Rhonda Rhonda2014-11-29 15:00:302014-12-28 18:22:47Silver Train
All Down The Line
The band releases, All Down The Line, from, Exile On Main St. Engineer, Johns:
It was the first one that was finished cause we’d be working for months and months. Mick got very enamored. ‘It’s finished! It’s going to be the single!’ I thought, ‘This isn’t really a single, you know.’ I remember going out and talking to him and he was playing the piano. ‘Mick, this isn’t a single. It doesn’t compare to Jumpin’ Jack Flash or Street Fighting Man. ‘Come on, man.’ He went, ‘Really? Do you think so?’ I thought, ‘My God. He’s actually listening to me.’ (laughs). And then, I was having a struggle with the mix I thought was gonna be it. Ahmet Ertegun then barged in with a bunch of hookers and ruined the one mix. He stood right in front of the left speaker with two birds on each arm (laughs).
I told Mick, ‘I can’t hear it here. If I could hear it on the radio that would be nice.’ It was just a fantasy. ‘Oh, we can do that.’ ‘Stew (piano player Ian Stewart), go to the nearest FM radio station with the tape and say we’d like to hear it over the radio. And we’ll get a limo and Andy can listen to it in the car.’ I went, ‘Bloody hell…Well, it’s the Stones. OK.’
So sure enough, we’re touring down Sunset Strip and Keith is in one seat, and I’m in the back where the speakers are with Mick, and Charlie is in there, too. Just because he was bored (laughs). And Mick’s got the radio on and the DJ comes on the air, ‘We’re so lucky tonight. We’re the first people to play the new Stones’ record.’ And it came on the radio and the speakers in this car were kind of shot. I still couldn’t tell. And it finishes. Then Mick turns around. ‘So?’ ‘I’m still not sure, man.’ I’m still not used to these speakers’. ‘Oh, we’ll have him play it again then.’
Poor Stew. ‘Have them play it again’ like they were some sort of radio service. It was surreal. Up and down Sunset Strip at 9:00 on a Saturday night. The Strip was jumpin’ and I’m in the car with those guys listening to my mixes. It sounded OK. ‘I think we’re down with that.’ So then we moved on.
Happy
The band releases, Happy, from the album, Exile On Main St. Richards:
That’s a strange song, because if you play it you actually become happy, even in the worst of circumstances. It has a little magical bounce about it. I wrote it one afternoon when we were cutting Exile on Main St. in France and the studio was in my basement. And Bobby Keys was with me and they got this lick going. So we went down and I recorded it with just guitar and Bobby Keys on baritone saxophone. While we were doing that, Jimmy Miller, who was our producer at the time, came in. And he was a very good drummer as well. So we said, well let’s put down a dub, we’ll just sort of sketch it out and play it later. But it’s another one of those things that ended up being on the record. It was just one of those moments that you get that are very happy. And I can play it now and it gives you a lift. I don’t know why except for maybe the word.
Rip This Joint
The band releases their song, Rip This Joint, from the album, Exile On Main St.
Rocks Off
The band releases, Rocks Off, from, Exile On Main St. Johns:
It went on for ages. When Mick came back from Paris for the first time he seemed happy with the sound. And Keith would sit down stairs and at one point he sat there for 12 hours without getting out of his chair just playing the riff over and over and over.
And then one night, it was very late, four or five in the morning, Keith says, ‘Let me listen to that take again.’ And he nods off while the tape is playing. I thought, ‘Great. That’s it. End of the night and I’m out of here.’ So I go back to my place where I was staying. (Horn player/arranger) Jim Price and I had this villa. It was pretty spanky. I’m tellin’ you. A half an hour drive. I walk in the front door and the phone is ringing. I pick it up and it’s Keith. ‘Where are you?’ ‘Well, I’m obviously here ’cause I answered the phone.’ ‘Well you better get back here, man, ’cause I have this guitar part. Come back!
Sweet Virginia
The band releases their song, Sweet Virginia, from the album, Exile On Main St. Richards:
Some songs – Sweet Virginia – were held over from Sticky Fingers. It was the same line-up and I’ve always felt those two albums kind of fold into each other… there was not much time between them and I think it was all flying out of the same kind of energy.
Plundered My Soul
The band releases their song, Plundered My Soul, from the album, Exile On Main St. (2010 re-release).
Tumbling Dice
The band releases, Tumbling Dice, from, Exile On Main St. Jagger:
This was originally titled Good Time Woman. It started out with a great riff from Keith and we had it down as a completed song called Good Time Women. That take is one of the bonus tracks on the new Exile package; it was quite fast and sounded great but I wasn’t happy with the lyrics.
Later, I got the title in my head, ‘call me the tumbling dice’ so I had the theme for it. I didn’t know anything about dice playing but I knew lots of jargon used by dice players. I’d heard gamblers in casinos shouting it out.
I asked my housekeeper if she played dice. She did and she told me these terms. That was the inspiration.
Wild Horses
The band releases, Wild Horses, from the album, Sticky Fingers. Richards:
Wild Horses almost wrote itself. It was really a lot to do with, once again, f-cking around with the tunings. I found these chords, especially doing it on a twelve-string to start with, which gave the song this character and sound. There’s a certain forlornness that can come out of a twelve-string. I started off, I think, on a regular six-string open E, and it sounded very nice, but sometimes you just get these ideas. What if I open tuned a twelve-string? All it meant was translate what Mississippi Fred McDowell was doing – twelve-string slide – into five-string mode, which meant a ten-string guitar.
Brown Sugar
0 CommentsThe band releases, Brown Sugar, from, Sticky Fingers.
Dead Flowers
The band releases, Dead Flowers, from, Sticky Fingers. Jagger:
I love Country music, but I find it very hard to take it seriously. I also think a lot of country music is sung with the tongue in cheek, so I do it tongue in cheek. The harmonic thing is very different from the blues. It doesn’t bend notes in the same way, so I suppose it’s very English, really. Even though it’s been very Americanized, it feels very close to me, to my roots, so to speak.
Monkey Man
0 0 Rhonda Rhonda2014-11-30 21:08:102014-12-28 21:37:10Monkey Man
Midnight Rambler
The band releases their song, Midnight Rambler, from the album, Let It Bleed. Jagger:
That’s a song Keith and I really wrote together. We were on a holiday in Italy. In this very beautiful hill town, Positano, for a few nights. Why we should write such a dark song in this beautiful, sunny place, I really don’t know. We wrote everything there – the tempo changes, everything. And I’m playing the harmonica in these little cafés, and there’s Keith with the guitar.
Live With Me
0 0 Rhonda Rhonda2014-11-30 21:08:072014-12-28 21:22:03Live With Me
Love In Vain
The band releases, Love In Vain, from the album, Let It Bleed. The song is a remake of Johnson’s blues classic. Richards:
For a time we thought the songs that were on that first album were the only recordings Robert Johnson had made, and then suddenly around ’67 or ’68 up comes this second bootleg collection that included Love in Vain. Love in Vain was such a beautiful song. Mick and I both loved it, and at the time I was working and playing around with Gram Parsons, and I started searching around for a different way to present it, because if we were going to record it there was no point in trying to copy the Robert Johnson style or ways and styles. We took it a little bit more country, a little bit more formalized, and Mick felt comfortable with that.
Gimme Shelter
The band releases, Gimme Shelter, featuring Clayton, from, Let It Bleed. Jagger:
That song was written during the Vietnam War and so it’s very much about the awareness that war is always present; it was very present in life at that point. Mary Clayton who did the backing vocals, was a background singer who was known to one of the producers. Suddenly, we wanted someone to sing in the middle of the night. And she was around. She came with her curlers in, straight from bed, and had to sing this really odd lyric. For her it was a little odd – for anyone, in the middle of the night, to sing this one verse I would have been odd. She was great.
Honky Tonk Women
The band releases their song, Honky Tonk Women, from, Let It Bleed. Richards:
Honky Tonk Women started in Brazil. Mick and I, Marianne Faithfull and Anita Pallenberg who was pregnant with my son at the time. Which didn’t stop us going off to the Mato Grasso and living on this ranch. It’s all cowboys. It’s all horses and spurs. And Mick and I were sitting on the porch of this ranch house and I started to play, basically fooling around with an old Hank Williams idea. ‘Cause we really thought we were like real cowboys. Honky tonk women. And we were sitting in the middle of nowhere with all these horses, in a place where if you flush the john all these black frogs would fly out. It was great. The chicks loved it. Anyway, it started out a real country honk put on, a hokey thing. And then couple of months later we were writing songs and recording. And somehow by some metamorphosis it suddenly went into this little swampy, black thing, a Blues thing. Really, I can’t give you a credible reason of how it turned around from that to that. Except there’s not really a lot of difference between white Country music and black Country music. It’s just a matter of nuance and style. I think it has to do with the fact that we were playing a lot around with open tunings at the time. So we were trying songs out just to see if they could be played in open tuning. And that one just sunk in.
